‘New’ Libyan air force attacks city, NATO no-fly zone?

This 19 April 2011 video is called Libya War: Victims of NATO bombing in Sabha.

Early in 2011, pro-Gaddafi armed forces in Libya fought against armed rebels. During that fighting, the governmental air force bombed ground targets.

The governments of NATO countries then had been, until recently, been quite friendly with the Gaddafi regime. Until Gaddafi proposed that the Libyan share of Libyan oil income should increase at the expense of the share of foreign Big Oil corporations. That, presto! changed the minds of NATO countries’ politicians. Suddenly, they started worrying about human rights in Libya.

The Libyan air force bombs became a pretext for demanding a no-fly zone in Libya, enforced by NATO air forces. Then, “mission creep” started. The no-fly zone evolved into a NATO air war on Libya. It killed not only pro-Gaddafi soldiers, but also many civilians (like in Sabha city, as the video shows), and sometimes even anti-Gaddafi fighters. However, NATO politicians insisted the war was not about regime change, but only because of worries about human rights. Then, that supposedly limited war evolved into an unlimited war which was about regime change. And then, that war about regime change evolved into lynch mob murder of Gaddafi (on the orders of French President Sarkozy, analysts say).

Sarkozy and Gaddafi

This photo shows Sarkozy when he still had different ideas about Gaddafi.

On 18 January 2014, Dutch NOS TV reported that the Libyan government had proclaimed a state of emergency. In southern Libya, around Sabha, the air force of the pro-NATO government of the ‘new’ Libya had attacked ground targets. At least thirty people died.

Now, will NATO politicians stay true to their worries about human rights of early 2011? The bombs of the ‘new’ Libyan air force have just as many lethal risks for civilians as those of Gaddafi’s old Libyan air force. Will NATO try to impose a no-fly zone, like three years ago?

Don’t count on it. The present Libyan government is the result of NATO’s war on Libya. The present regime in Tripoli so far has not asked for a bigger Libyan share in Libyan oil profits, unlike Gaddafi then.

Suppose they would ask now for more oil money. Then, very suddenly, NATO politicians might discover the human rights violations of the ‘new’ Libya: the torturing and killing of people for being black; the killing of people for being Christian; the downgrading of human beings’ rights for being women; etc. etc. Then, but only then, the corporate media in NATO countries, which so far have been rather silent about these horrors, may suddenly start to have those horrors on their front pages in big letters, and on prime time TV. In order to goad public opinion in NATO countries into the next “humanitarian” war on Libya.